


shined shoes and bitten lips

by incode



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ballet, Anxiety, Family, Flashbacks, Fluff, M/M, Minor Character Death, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-30 18:59:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10882962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incode/pseuds/incode
Summary: Victor has been around music his entire life, and it took him so long to realize he could dance.Wherein Victor is a violinist, Yuuri is a ballet dancer, and Victor's always biting his nails.





	shined shoes and bitten lips

Victor is waiting for a train that feels like it will never come.

It’s been a mild day, but the cold gets more bitter as evening sets. Victor shuffles his feet on the platform, and he bites at the inside of his cheek as he looks down at them. His dress brogues are polished up, but there are scuffs at the toes and the quarters, showing their wear. He’s walked every street in this city in them, he’s pretty sure. He’s had them repaired, the leather rebuilt and the heels resoled so many times that he knows he’s spent well over their original purchase price three or four times over. But they still feel like they did thirty years ago, and he’ll never throw them out.

He huddles into his coat and thinks of home, of pilaf and a warm fire and the creak of the old wooden floors. In an hour he’ll finally be curled up in his own blankets with a fat, mean cat lying to one side of him, begrudging with every look as if she didn’t choose the spot, and a poodle whose comforting weight will press into his side and whose tongue will lick his chin to welcome him home. He feels like he’s coming down with something, just a little bit - perhaps he is getting too old for these trips out of town. He wants soup and a book and a warm fire.

There’s one other person on the platform - a young woman around twenty, stretching her legs out behind her. Victor can tell she dances, from the way she holds her ankle and extends her leg up with perfect form, leans forward and trusts her core. She doesn’t care that he’s there, and he assigns her a melody in his head as he watches her hop from foot to foot - something upbeat, airy.

He still remembers really breaking these shoes in, remembers the first time he danced in them.

 

*

 

When he is sixteen, Victor leaves home.

It’s not that his parents have mistreated him. They’ve done their best. But the little suburb he’s grown up in never had any charm to begin with, and it can’t nurture what he yearns for, though he still isn’t quite sure what that is. He leaves for St. Petersburg on a summer afternoon without saying goodbye and busks in train stations until he lands a job with a small dance and theatre company that needs in-house musicians. The man running the audition, Yakov, is gruff and blunt, but it’s clear that he sees his talent, which isn't surprising considering Victor has done only one thing for his entire life and it’s play the violin. There’s a somewhat menacing glint in Yakov’s eyes as Victor holds his bow down, a bit out of breath, allowing himself to chew at the inside of his cheek.

“First chair,” Yakov says in a voice that was probably meant to be a whisper to the conductor sitting beside him.

The other man nods, and Victor’s heart swells.   
  
  


*

 

When Victor first sees the little danseur that joins them from Japan, he can’t help but pull at his lip with his teeth.

He is somewhat stocky, built on tree-trunk thighs and a thick midsection which holds his sculpted shoulders back elegantly as he takes his leaps. He’s got a shock of black hair and dark eyes that shine in the low amber light of the rehearsal stage and he dances almost  _ aggressively, _ powerfully, going from one side of the stage to the other with a combination of speed and grace that has Victor reeling. Victor has never seen anything like him, and he’s seen a lot of dancers in his time. He  nearly tears his lip to shreds watching him from the orchestra pit.

He reads up on him. Yuuri Katsuki, a shining star in Japan but for the past year he has been out of the spotlight following a mysterious emotional breakdown, a subject on which there is a massive amount of speculative journalism. Victor frowns at his laptop but he can’t stop reading it, and he feels voyeuristic, gobbling up Google-translated articles about Yuuri late at night when he hasn’t said so much as two words to the boy. He finds him fascinating, the way he so clearly feels the music and lets it show on his face, even the way he wears his convertible tights bunched up around his ankles. Victor overheard him one night backstage, telling another dancer in rather impressive English that he prefers to practice barefoot because it lets him feel better connected to the floor, and he about choked on his varenyky dumpling, the thought is so beautiful.

He can’t get up the nerve to talk to him. There’s a strange worry that he’ll upset some sort of balance that makes Yuuri’s routine possible - there’s always been a divide Victor imagines between himself and dancers, so methodical and disciplined while Victor feels more scatterbrained, far less organized. Because although Victor has been around music his entire life, he has never been able to make his feet cooperate. And besides, Yuuri seems to keep to himself most of the time - though he has an easy, fond smile, he flashes it and carries on. Victor is convinced Yuuri has no idea he exists unless he’s pointed out. He feels terribly cast in Yuuri’s shadow, out in the darkness at his back while he sends out light.

It’s the dress rehearsal before opening night, and the second chair nudges him and Victor scrambles to take his bow up in time. He finds that when he’s playing, it’s easy to imagine Yuuri moving to the music he alone makes. But he is not so naive as to fool himself into thinking he would be flattered by attention from a member of the orchestra. He focuses on his technique, just as he’s always done. He presses back against the crush that festers and fizzes within him even as he feels it bloom further open painfully in his chest.

But his bottom lip is always chapped.

 

*

 

He’s twenty-three and it’s deep, deep winter when he gets a call that his parents have died. Car accident, says their lawyer, clipped through the grainy cell reception of the country. They hit some black ice. Nothing anyone could do.

His mother had always loved the arts. She’d sat in a matinee box seat in her best dress, modest but garish purple, just a month or so ago and had cheered excitedly even though a ballet is not the sort of engagement you cheer at. Victor had been terribly embarrassed and had not introduced her to anybody in the company, had just ushered her out to dinner and listened to her chatter about the elaborate set design for an hour over bread and wine. He had kissed her cheek in goodbye and told her to give his love to Dad, and that was the last time they spoke.

“Will you need me to start making the arrangements?” the lawyer asks. Victor remembers him hanging around the house, drunk in the summers with his dad.

“Yes,” Victor says slowly, “yes, I suppose I will.” He hangs up the phone, stares at it for a moment. He scrolls through his contacts until his thumb hovers over Yuuri’s name and sits there, on the side of his bed in the dark.

It’s been a year now, a year of caught eyes and heated cheeks and shy jokes and half-flirting in the rare moments they end up in the same room. And one thing Victor considers a date, an opening night afterparty where he and Yuuri had found a balcony and talked for two hours, conversation easy and about nothing in particular. There had been no kiss but a hand lingering on his waist where Victor still burns to this day, or wishes he did, wishes Yuuri had curled his fingers in and just melted into him.

His birthday is tomorrow. Chewing his lip, he dials the phone without knowing what he’s going to say.

 

*

 

Victor got a key years ago from the clerical guy he had a fling with when he’d first joined the company. He’s pretty sure he’s not allowed to have it, and he’s pretty sure that everyone in management knows that he does, and he’s also pretty sure that nobody cares, considering they haven’t said a word. He keeps it on the same ring he keeps his house keys on, and lets himself in on random weekday mornings, when the streets are deserted and he can walk from his apartment to the theater without seeing a single other living soul. Sometimes at 2 A.M. there’s still too much happening after hours and hours of tossing and turning in his bed, and he needs a big, empty space that’ll absorb the noise and let him hear his own thoughts.

He plays the piano because he didn’t bring his violin. He so rarely plays, but he finds that his long fingers find the notes easily, and he leans back for a moment and lets himself idly touch the ivory of the keys. There’s rhythm in the instrument, he just has to find it.

He often has to remind himself.

He breathes. There’s a strange silence all around him, but it’s comforting. When this theater is bustling with staff, oh; he focuses on that silence and he hears it all. He’s a good observer, a quick study. The plush velvet upholstery on the audience chairs makes a swishing sound if it’s brushed against the grain, and often kicks up dust, just like the attic closet door. There’s a drop screen that lowers on ropes and pulleys operated from the basement, and it takes three men to operate it - one coaching from the balcony in the auditorium through the walkie-talkie, and two letting the ropes from their tie-ups beneath the stage. The stage has an imperfection, a weak spot, a dip, that has broken multiple ankles - all dancers and actors are advised of it their first day, though nobody has bothered to get it fixed. Victor has learned these flaws inside and out over his years of being here, and he used to think they were simple annoyances, but lately Yuuri has been affectionately pointing out the quirks in things when they come upon them together, and he’s starting to think he could see the beautiful in the mundane, or even the imperfect.

It turns out dancers are a lot less rigid than he assumed. Or at least, his dancer is.

Yuuri is the first person he’s been able to call his, and it still feels strange. His fingers press down on the middle notes, a simple rocking-chair tune that sounds like a lullaby.

“Victor?”

Victor doesn’t bother looking up - he knows the only other person who thinks to come here this late, because he sleeps in the same bed as him more often than not. Yuuri steps right in the dip in the floor on his way across the stage and it creaks in protest. Victor smiles despite his mood.

Yuuri sets his hands down on his shoulders, and then he bends to rest his chin on him, breath on his neck, warmth wrapping around him as Yuuri puts his arms around his waist. “You doin’ okay?” Yuuri asks.

Victor considers it, and he wonders why he’d been stupid enough to run away. It turns out everything he needs is in Yuuri’s arms, warm and safe. “Yeah,” he answers finally, digging out the hangnail from his thumb. Yuuri presses a wet, smacking kiss to his cheek. He never asks beyond the initial assurance, but always listens when Victor wants to talk, and Victor appreciates it - there’s always this sort of peace radiating off of him, a calming mumble of comfortable sound laced into his natural energy.

“Come on,” Yuuri says, covering Victor’s hand with his own and tugging him up to stand, “come dance with me.”

“There’s no music,” Victor laughs, even as Yuuri sets them up, draping Victor’s hand over his own shoulder as he puts his own hand at his waist.

“Don’t worry about it. Let me lead you,” Yuuri says quietly, leaning in close and nudging at Victor’s feet. Victor’s wearing the shoes Yuuri bought him for their first anniversary two months ago, soft blue leather that broke in easily and feels like it was custom molded for him. He follows Yuuri’s movement, giggling when he trips over his own feet and Yuuri responds only by grinning and speeding up. Before long, he forgets why he came in the first place, but he knows that, for now, he’s glad he’s here.

It’s about four in the morning, and Victor’s never had so much fun when he should be sleeping.

 

*

 

Victor pockets his keys, drops his violin case in the threshold, and hangs up his coat, calling the dog’s name. She follows him dutifully into the bedroom and sits by the bed as she watches him change, wagging her tail as she waits for him. Yuuri stirs as he climbs under the covers and the dog burrows into the blankets at their feet, making herself a sort of nest.

“Mm,” Yuuri says, realizing what’s happening as Victor spoons in behind him, his nose pressed to Yuuri’s neck. “You’re home.” His head collapses back on the pillow, and he sighs as he wiggles back in Victor’s arms, fitting their hips together. Yuuri’s body is softer now, but it’s all right because so is Victor’s, and they fit up against one another better than ever.

“I would have come and picked you up,” Yuuri yawns after a few moments. Victor suspects that he fell asleep and woke back up in the lull. He smiles, hand settling over Yuuri’s stomach.

“‘S okay,” he says. “You know I like the train to collect my thoughts.”

“How did it go?”

Victor thinks it over. At this point, all cities kind of blend together, but he tries to find something interesting in each one to bring back to Yuuri because he likes the stories. It’s not practical for Yuuri to travel everywhere with him these days - he has his own life going on, the plant nursery and his volunteering at the animal shelter. Yuuri loves gardening, and has found ways to beat even in the harsh Russian weather when it comes to making flowers bloom. Victor has whatever the opposite of a green thumb is, and he is floored, all the time, by Yuuri’s ability to help things grow. Their children had been his masterpiece, and they’re both grown now, but Victor still thinks of Yuuri holding their daughter in his arms on the day they brought her home, knowing she was fragile but a certain fierceness to his grip, as if to promise to her that she’d be strong and fearless.

“It was wonderful,” Victor says. “They have these flowers there that remind me of you.”

“Hmmmm.” Yuuri sniffs and flips his hair back out of his face, rubbing his cheek into the pillow. “Tell me all about it tomorrow. And let’s go dancing.” His breathing evens out to soft, regular puffs as Victor hums against his nape.

The dog snores loudly, and the sun is almost up by the time Victor falls asleep. He runs his tongue along the inside of his cheek, finding it a little sore from chewing during the week away, but Yuuri’s hand is lightly cupped over both of his where they’re clasped in front of him so he can’t bite at his nails.


End file.
